He has brought viewers to tears as grieving Mark Latimer in the Dorset-based crime drama Broadchurch.

But many people won’t know that actor Andrew Buchan, who is from Bolton, previously worked as a tour guide at the iconic Granada Studios Tour. And it was while working on the tour, when he was 17-years-old, that he first met his Broadchurch co-star Julie Hesmondhalgh when she was playing Hayley Cropper on Coronation Street.

Speaking on BBC Radio 6 Music recently he said: “If you paid a couple of extra quid on that tour you got to meet a VIP, so young Andy brought out Julie Hesmondhalgh.

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Andrew previously appeared in the award-winning BBC series Cranford. And he starred in the ITV1 drama The Fixer in the lead role as John Mercer, an assassin targeting people who have escaped the law.

Andrew as Mark Latimer (Image: ITV/Kudos)

In 2008 he won rave reviews for his role in Arthur Miller’s The Man Who Had All the Luck which ran for six weeks in London, before going on a UK tour and Andrew received the Manchester Evening News Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Touring Production. In 2014 he starred in the BBC spy thriller The Honourable Woman with Hollywood actress Maggie Gyllenhaal.

In Broadchurch Andrew plays Mark Latimer the father of murdered schoolboy Danny. The first series saw Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller’s husband Joe unmasked as the killer and the Latimer family were torn apart in the second series when Joe was eventually allowed to walk free after being cleared of murder.

Andrew at the National Television Awards (Image: Getty)

In the third, and thought to be final, series Mark tracked Joe down and went after him to force a confession before attempting to take his own life.

The fact he is survived and is still in the series has led some viewers to believe his character could be Trish Winterman’s rapist.

One viewer raged: “Pretty fumin that I’ve mourned Mark Latimer for a week only to find out he’s alive.”

Andrew as Mark and Jodie Whittaker as Beth Latimer in the second series of Broadchurch (Image: ITV)